Blue

At Parramatta Library yesterday, I had the otherworldly experience of trying to use public loos which are lit with dim blue light. Apparently the blue lights make it difficult to identify a vein, obliging hapless junkies to vacate to the nearest alley, or damage themselves even further in the effort to inject. They also turn your lips blue, your blood green, and make your freckles stand out a mile. There were no sharps disposals boxes, either, so if a drug user does manage to shoot up with the assistance of texta marks on the arm or just the persistence of the desperate, they have nowhere safe to leave the needle. Plus the dim lighting, which contravenes Australian lighting standards, makes it hard to see. I'd hate to be a little old lady with fading eyesight in that creepy Ultraviolet chamber.

Choox

A puff piece for chook growers in today's SMH:

Helter Shelter

The executive director of the Australian Chicken Meat Industry: "People who pay $30 per kilogram for an organic chicken are off their bloody heads." Apparently so, since the organic delivery service I use will sell you an entire chook for $15 - $20, or a kilo of drumsticks for $13. (You will pay $30/kilo for a tray of breast meat, tho.) If the boys would actually eat the stuff, I'd buy it for them, but raw meat seems to be beyond their culinary grasp.

Hildegard of Bingen

Just watched a terrific 1994 documentary-drama on the famous Mediaeval visionary nun, filmed on location, with Patricia Routledge in the title role. Much of the dialogue was obviously drawn from H's writing, and some of her visions were dramatised in a simple and effective way; plus a large amount of her music was incorporated into the story.